Call to Nullify Jury outside Courthouse not Criminal Offense

04/20/12

On Thursday, a retired Chemistry professor narrowly escaped trial when the criminal case against him was dismissed by U.S. District Judge, Kimba Wood. The professor was charged over distributing pamphlets outside a Manhattan federal court urging nullification of the jury. Julian Heicklen, 80, of Teaneck, New Jersey was charged with jury tampering and arrested in 2010. The pamphlets distributed by him asked ‘potential jurors' to observe the dictates of their own consciences and find a defendant not-guilty if they found that the law or the government's conduct was unconscionable.


The judge who dismissed the complaint said that the activities of Mr. Heicklen fell short of the requirements of the statute he was charged under. The judge opined, “The court holds that a person violates the statute only when he knowingly attempts to influence the action or decision of a juror upon an issue or matter pending before that juror or pertaining to that juror's duties by means of written communication made in relation to a specific case pending before that juror or in relation to a point in dispute between the parties before that juror."

In a 27-page opinion, the judge said that the statute was too broadly interpreted by the government and the indictment was legally insufficient and should therefore be dismissed. This is because Heicklen was not addressing any specific case or issue before an active juror.

What the government found controversial and criminal in Hecklen's pamphlet was the statement, “Juries were instituted to protect citizens from the tyranny of the government …It is not the duty of the jury to uphold the law. It is the jury's duty to see that justice is done.”

The judge who dismissed the case against the retired professor wrote in a footnote, “The court notes that our judicial system rests, in part, on the belief that jurors every day follow much more difficult instructions … It is just as reasonable to trust that jurors will follow a judge's instruction to accept the law as explained by the judge and disregard the contents o a pamphlet handed to them by a leafletter outside the courthouse.”

The statute that was used to charge Hecklen has been used rarely, and was originally passed by the U.S. Congress in 1872 following repeated attempts by people seeking to manipulate grand juries.

However the judge declined to accept the government's overbroad application of the statute and said under a different set of circumstances, the alleged acts may have been counted as offenses, but the lack of addressing any specific juror or issue before the court made it general opinion.

The case is U.S. v. Julian Heicklen, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 10-1154.